Radio renegade broke the mould

In an age when illusion is almost constant and nearly everything can be faked, we need all the eccentrics, non-conformists and iconoclasts we can get.

One of the few things that can't be faked is eccentricity. We accept the disturbed, deranged and chaotic but authentic eccentrics, employing their creativity outside the symmetry of ordered social geometry, tend to scare the hell out of us.

His contradictions and fusion of the bizarre with the practical, far from provoking fear and loathing, inspired admiration and gratitude and raised the questions: are there benign and malign forms of nonconformity? Are refractory idiosyncrasies a matter of external perception or the conscious harnessing of chaos for artistic ends?

Unofficial mentor ... ABC program maker Tony Barrell at the console in 1979.

It is tempting to reflect on Barrell's life as a painting, yet immediately problematical trying to discern the style of it from a collage of surrealism, impressionism and art brut. He didn't fit the mould despite being raised in the Welsh town of Mold in Flintshire.

He emerged from the era of Angry Young Men but seldom displayed aggressive reactions to the friction between conservative views and the burgeoning spirit of the 1960s, turning his frustration into fresh thinking capable of providing unusual perspectives to contentious issues. (Usually with a sense of responsibility governed by the laws of hypocrisy, which remind us that the Angry Young Men of today are the Boring Old Farts of tomorrow.)

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Barrell was born into a middle-class family in Cheshire during the early days of World War II. The wireless gave him wings, with stations such as Radio America and Radio Luxembourg opening windows to possibilities, which, after secondary education at The King's School, Chester, he began to explore at the University of Liverpool.

Rubbing shoulders with John Lennon, George Harrison and Stuart Sutcliffe, among others, he tapped into the flow of energy that illuminated the drab Merseyside city that became a crucible of creative potential with the arrival of ships from foreign ports bearing cultural as well as industrial cargo.

Barrell became a ''scribbler'', churning out precis for Penguin paperback books and writing articles for Cream and Zig Zag magazines.

On securing employment with the documentary film house Pathe Pictorial, his gypsy soul took flight on assignments in Britain and abroad.

Somewhere along the way he attained a degree in economics.

Between 1961 and 1969 in London, he crossed paths with Martin Sharp, Richard Neville and the larrikin, expat Oz crowd as the city seethed with subcultures and in 1967, while ''collecting big noses'' at a party, he spotted film designer Jane Norris across a crowded room. Shazam!

They remained co-conspirators through the rest of that decade and the ensuing four. Their daughter, Klio, arrived in 1974 and the following year, on impulse, he suggested a jaunt to Australia. Jane recalls his tendency to wake up and announce: ''What a lovely day - why don't we go to Greece!'' … or somewhere.

They arrived in Sydney in 1975 and within weeks Barrell had been signed by Marius Webb to the ABC's new, youth-oriented radio station, Doublejay (now Triple J).

At 35, he was substantially older than most of his colleagues but soon mutated out of his job brief as a writer to make and produce programs, gradually becoming resident provocateur, mentor, juxtaposer and fly in the managerial ointment.

His light touch and sensitively tuned bullshit detector expedited the encouragement of talent while not impeding the irreverence synonymous with the enterprise. His long devotion to radio made him a good listener and he knew that undergraduate indulgence and fakery were death.

He recorded interviews with Brian Eno, Hunter S. Thompson, John Cale and John Lydon and constructed soundscapes, cut-ups and plunderphonics. Newsroom stints with Jim Middleton and Mark Colvin provided complementary rigour to the abstract.

In this ambit his influence was profound. With cartoonist and painter Tony Edwards, he brought the porcine comic-strip hero Captain Goodvibes to life, combining elements of Gilbert Shelton's superhero swine, Wonder Wart-Hog, with a scabrous ocker sensibility.

Collapsing in mirth over schooners of Goodvibes's patent Drano cocktails - shaken, not stirred - the duo concocted wild scenarios, including the assassination of 1970s Governor-General Sir John Kerr.

Barrell became involved with another wanderer, Rick Tanaka, in Nippi Rock Shop, a weekly program devoted to Japanese contemporary music and culture. It inspired an enduring fascination with Japan.

The pair also took part in a series of ''happenings'' under the banner Guido and Yakitori Go to the Barber and published two off-centre but penetrating histories of 20th-century Japan. A third awaits.

Elsewhere, Barrell inspired and provoked young sound artists and program makers such as Natalie Kestecher, Brent Clough and Gretchen Miller, never formally accepting the role of mentor yet guiding intuitive program-making based on skilled research, energy and curiosity.

Tony Barrell readily admitted to being a Sydney Swans fanatic and a lover of public transport. They made the perfect combination for a man with an acutely developed capacity for grumbling.

He viewed Aussie Rules as a metaphor for life, with ball security - the focus of other codes - not one of the absolutes.

There were numerous passions - photography, social network gadgets, jam-making, films, cricket and citrus trees in the garden of his wooden cottage in Balmain, where he could enjoy time with his granddaughter, Marcella, along with cheap-and-cheerful food, conversation, friends.

His last day included the conducting of a masterclass at ABC HQ in Ultimo and a trip to watch the Swans defeat Essendon by five. Then home to bed, content.

He went gently into that last goodnight neither raging as an angry young man nor whimpering as a boring old fart.

Colvin's warm and affectionate eulogy, to an overflowing crowd at Balmain Town Hall, revived recent anecdotes and old memories. It and other tributes - including Russell Stapleton's audio cut-up, made to commemorate Barrell's retirement and now an apt, post-punk requiem - can be found online.

A constellation of ABC staff from most ambits of the organisation joined co-conspirators from diverse fields whose orbits meshed with Barrell's elliptical trajectory through life, to reflect cheerfully on a life that was well lived.

Upbeat and strong in voice, Jane expressed no resentment for the ''other (older) woman'' in their long marriage - the ABC - which Barrell reluctantly left in 2008 as a consequence of uncertain health.

Author Rebecca Miller writes of a peculiar ailment - the need by people who don't see themselves as enough, to make things. ''If I was enough,'' she writes, ''I wouldn't do anything except live my life. But I have this disease that makes me need to produce things outside myself - a compulsion to prove my existence.''

Tony Barrell's life was a painting - is a painting - an eccentric masterpiece far more impulsive than compulsive or existential. And it will remain a work in progress as long as his memory survives in the admiration and creative energy of others.

And while that process ensues, the vital evidence of a luminous existence will never be governed by any predictable axis or fixed point of support. Such things exist invisibly - in the air, emanating ever-outwards like radiowaves.

Ultimately - and appropriately - it's a simple matter of frequency.

Tony is survived by Jane, Klio and her partner, Garth, and granddaughter Marcella.